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On This Day: NASA Launches Phoenix Rover To Mars in 2007
August 31, 2020 at 08:36 PM EDT
By WeatherBug's Chris Sayles
On the heels of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launch, today marks the 13th anniversary for NASA’s groundbreaking Phoenix rover launch.
The high-profile mission to Mars launched on August 4, 2007 with the Phoenix rover arriving on the Red Planet on May 25, 2008. The Phoenix Mars Lander’s main goal was to explore the ancient water-ice buried beneath the arctic regions of Mars, in search for a habitable environment and ancient biological resources to sustain life. With the help of a chemistry lab, microscopes and a plethora of cameras, Phoenix would descend upon the planet ready to excavate golden information.
Thanks to discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter back in 2002, this mission was streamlined to investigate the findings on the Martian planet. Huge amounts of frozen water were discovered underneath the subsurface of the North Pole in the arctic plain of Mars. Thus, the Phoenix rover was purposefully targeting this region where it could use its large robotic arm to uncover possibly water-ice material from the soil. Once this was completed, the rover would then bring samples of the water-ice material to the landing station to further analyze.
The overarching goals of Phoenix were to determine if Mars teemed with biological life at some point, analyze and decipher the climate of Mars, unwrap the geology of Mars and ultimately take one step closer to human exploration. After landing on Mars, Phoenix spent three months doing scientific research on the content of the Martian ice, soil and atmosphere.
In fact, the rover outlasted the projected window for its lifespan, lasting an additional 2 months on the Red Planet. Phoenix would meet its demise after a lack of sunlight paired with Mars’ cruel environment, making it impossible for the rover to continue to deliver a surplus of information from our neighboring planet.
Sources: NASA
Story Image: This mosaic of images from the Surface Stereo Imager camera on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander shows a portion of the spacecraft's deck after deliveries of several Martian soil samples to instruments on the deck. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University)
The high-profile mission to Mars launched on August 4, 2007 with the Phoenix rover arriving on the Red Planet on May 25, 2008. The Phoenix Mars Lander’s main goal was to explore the ancient water-ice buried beneath the arctic regions of Mars, in search for a habitable environment and ancient biological resources to sustain life. With the help of a chemistry lab, microscopes and a plethora of cameras, Phoenix would descend upon the planet ready to excavate golden information.
Thanks to discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter back in 2002, this mission was streamlined to investigate the findings on the Martian planet. Huge amounts of frozen water were discovered underneath the subsurface of the North Pole in the arctic plain of Mars. Thus, the Phoenix rover was purposefully targeting this region where it could use its large robotic arm to uncover possibly water-ice material from the soil. Once this was completed, the rover would then bring samples of the water-ice material to the landing station to further analyze.
The overarching goals of Phoenix were to determine if Mars teemed with biological life at some point, analyze and decipher the climate of Mars, unwrap the geology of Mars and ultimately take one step closer to human exploration. After landing on Mars, Phoenix spent three months doing scientific research on the content of the Martian ice, soil and atmosphere.
In fact, the rover outlasted the projected window for its lifespan, lasting an additional 2 months on the Red Planet. Phoenix would meet its demise after a lack of sunlight paired with Mars’ cruel environment, making it impossible for the rover to continue to deliver a surplus of information from our neighboring planet.
Sources: NASA
Story Image: This mosaic of images from the Surface Stereo Imager camera on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander shows a portion of the spacecraft's deck after deliveries of several Martian soil samples to instruments on the deck. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University)